Norman Grindley/Deputy Chief Photographer
A street boy takes a nap on a grave in the St. Andrew Parish Church cemetery, in Half-Way Tree, on December 26, 2005.
Robert Buddan, Contributor
Global liberalisation since the 1990s has popularised the term 'marginalisation'. Marginalisation means that unequal opportunities reduce certain social categories of people to the margins of society and existence.
The antidote for this is empowerment and inclusion. These means giving people more control over their lives and including them in the decisions that affect their future.
Most societies rely on social intervention through legislation, special agencies, and programmes to rescue, protect and rehabilitate the marginalised. For others, social intervention, while welcome, is only temporary, ameliorative, often ad hoc and does not go to the heart of the problem. Their solution is to organise society in such a way that built-in mechanisms sustain inclusion of the disadvantaged and gradually eradicate poverty and transform the structures of society that produce inequality.
Liberalisation is not altogether friendly and social intervention alone is not the final answer. If liberalisation is the problem, anti-liberal policies are not the solution. We need to understand more about our own society and do something about its malaise.
A popular diagnosis is that the values of society damage self-esteem because of the pressure on people to measure up to a value system that is misplaced to begin with. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller puts it this way: "We live in a society which has become increasingly obsessed with money, materialism and status and which defines a man and masculinity in terms of these things as well as sexual prowess. When some young men cannot show the 'bling bling' they feel that they are less than human beings."
A society's value system can damage its people's sense of self-worth. One kind of solution comes from the Adventist Development Relief Agency, which has provided 42 young inner-city males at risk with educational and health security and a programme for character development that will lift them out of their marginalised conditions.
Some young people might not be able to form the right self-image. But, sometimes adults display behavioural dysfunctions that cause say, the abuse of children, which cannot be simplistically linked to liberalisation. The Minister of National Security reports that carnal abuse has increased by 31 per cent. Child abuse has forced the state to pass the Child Care and Protection Act and establish the Child Development Agency.
But, non-governmental organisations also play an interventionist role. A child advocacy organisation such as the Hope for Children Development Company, has to work with communities to educate parents and children to make them safe against abuse and sexual predators. Street children, too, are vulnerable to physical and substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and neglect. Betty-Anne Blaine, advocate for Hear the Children's Cry, says that 70 per cent of teens are among the 5,000 missing persons recorded in Jamaica over the past two years.
The Jamaica Social Investment Fund, Rotary Club of St. Andrew, the Possibility Programme and the Child Development Agency are putting money together to construct the Goodwin Park Hostel to provide street children with a home, skills and an alternative to anti-social behaviour.
Sometimes people are marginalised from two societies. The Land of My Birth Association of the Portmore Missionary Church has been formed to help deportees to reintegrate into the mainstream of society. Garnet Roper says that there is no organised way for many of these deportees to fit into a society they might have left as children and returned to as young adults.
Dealing with victimisers
If much of the above address the plight of victims, others believe tough laws against victimisers are needed, especially against those who victimise children. Senator Trevor Munroe believes the death penalty for child murderers is fitting. There were 105 murders of minors in 2005. Others in the Senate have suggested mandatory 25-year jail time for child molesters. There were close to 500 cases of child rape last year as well. Such prescriptions are aimed at correcting our own behaviour, not closing the door on liberalisation.
There is strong belief among the public that tough discipline in home and school will bring up better children. The Bill Johnson/Gleaner polls of August showed that 60 per cent of Jamaicans favour spanking and caning in schools as a form of discipline.
However, professionals hold the view that corporal punishment was an inappropriate form of behaviour modification. They prefer social and psychological interventions such as social worker visitations at homes and schools, psychological counselling, special camps for difficult children, injury surveillance surveys, and treatment at places such as the Child Guidance Clinic and the Child Abuse Mitigation Project at the Bustamante Hospital for Children.
Civic values
The Jamaica Teachers' Association believes that teaching civic values towards responsible citizenship must be part of the answer. The JTA reported that in 2004/5, authorities had to intervene in 1,050 conflicts in schools. In addressing this issue, UWI Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nigel Harris, calls for the society to practise 'good citizenship'. Indeed, good governance begins with good citizenship.
Still others believe that inclusion is a necessary antidote. The formation of a youth advisory board, with 12 young people aged 12 to 19, called the Jamaica Solution to Youth Lifestyle and Empowerment, is a move in the right direction. Credit goes to the Ministry of Health and USAID's Healthy Lifestyle Project.
There are clearly different forms of domestic social intervention designed to address marginalisation although everyone will agree that there isn't enough of it.
Parasitism - a special problem
A special problem among the marginalised, however, is what to do about those who will not help themselves.
According to Professor Trevor Munroe, 889,800 persons in our labour force of 1,193,000 had no training as of October 2005, and five out of eight were males. But the really shocking figure was that 338,200 persons 14 years and older did not want to work and more than two-thirds of them were males. Professor Munroe says this last figure reflects a growing problem of social parasitism. We need to ask of them, who is marginalising and excluding whom?
Probably many of these persons are dreaming of a visa from the U.S. embassy or elsewhere. In that case, those countries have a right to deny them. That makes them our problem. HEART/NTA wants to train and/or certify half of our labour force by 2008. But we would still have the problem of what to do with the parasitic underclass.
Perpetrators of crime
The Minister of National Security said in 2005 that of the unemployed Jamaicans, 75 per cent were victims or perpetrators of crime. In Bill Johnson's Gleaner polls of August, 72 per cent of Jamaicans felt crime and violence were the country's biggest problem and 66 per cent felt unemployment was the cause of crime and violence. But only three per cent ascribed 'laziness' to the cause of crime and violence, which is that percentage not wanting to work. Yet, if among the 'lazy' we include those in that same 'let off' culture of parasitism, we will find that they form a far greater percentage.
We need something very different to deal with this parasitic class and their self-marginalisation and self-exclusion. Probably we can combine much of what we apply to other groups to deal with this hard core of the marginalised - a database, psychological counselling, social work interventions, skills training and education, education in good citizenship, and small business opportunities. I have already suggested a ministry of human development to mainstream them. Even a human development agency would do.
Robert Buddan is a lecturer in the department of government at the University of the West Indies. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm
